One of the few things that China's governmental system had going for them was term limits for their head of state. This is a very unfortunate development for the world.
Right, but the term limit became defacto when the presidency was merged with the general secretary position. Xi could technically remain general secretary without remaining president, but practically that is impossible at this point, so the constitution had to be changed.
If china invades taiwan in will be a sign that China believes US leadership to be weak, and the world would follow that lead depending on the us response.
If they successfully coax a response, we hurt our economic ties, if they dont, they get facevalue gains and reduce us foreign credibility.
Nobody is going to start a global nuclear war over Taiwan. The country is far too close to mainland China for the US to perpetually stand-off China from taking the island in the case of war. It's futile almost no matter the strength gap between the US and China. China could have successfully taken Taiwan 15 years ago for the same reason, despite there being a huge military gap back then.
There's no scenario where China doesn't get Taiwan, unfortunately for the people there. The only question is what that's going to look like. The rest of the world will do nothing about it, other than wave their hands around frantically. When it happens (during Xi's lifetime), it's going to set a particularly terrible precedent that will encourage Russia to do more of the same in eastern Europe. If China then decides Mongolia too is part of greater China, who can really stop that? Nobody.
It has to do with global nuclear war because saying that one will not break out over 'x' ignores the fact that there's historical evidence for unimaginable carnage being triggered from seemingly minor events. Many scenarios put forward by military thinkers on what might trigger a nuclear war involve escalation – it's not limited to a country deciding to just fire off some rockets.
I mean, part of the motivation of getting rid of nukes is that 'it's only a matter of time' before someone decides to use them. Nuclear weapons have been around for less than 100 years, so it's not a lot of time to draw conclusions from about how likely Nuclear War is over N years.
> When it happens (during Xi's lifetime), it's going to set a particularly terrible precedent that will encourage Russia to do more of the same in eastern Europe.
It may provide a distraction for further Russian expansion, but Russia clearly doesn't need any new foreign precedent to justify invading it's neighbors.
> If China then decides Mongolia too is part of greater China, who can really stop that? Nobody.
China taking Taiwan might not start a major power war (though given the history of such wars, I wouldn't dismiss it as easily as you do), but Mongolia is much more likely to (with Russia as the opposing major power.)
> but Mongolia is much more likely to (with Russia as the opposing major power.)
Russia gets expansion in Europe. China gets expansion in Asia. They agree to try to stay out of each others way. It certainly wouldn't be unusual, historically speaking, for very powerful authoritarian regimes to reach agreement on annexations of territory.
...or to break those agreements. I imagine the memory of Operation Barbarossa hasn't faded much in Russia. It's hard to imagine them trusting China to move their military into a buffer state without moving further.
It might be a question of whether it matters, given the vast territory they already share (which if I'm not mistaken is already nearly the length of the Russia-Mongolia border).
Granted, for a long time now Russia has harbored paranoia about their vast empty East, and that China might one day want to push into it. Russia is depopulating and China is overflowing with people. The comedy of the situation, is Russia having used the ethnic Russian setup premise to seize territory in Ukraine - China could use the same argument in various territories in Eastern Russia.
That said, I don't see Russia being willing to fight over Mongolia. China is already far too powerful and economically capable for them to do that. Russia could never come close to managing to hold off China in Mongolia, I think they know that. And I don't think Russia would be willing to go nuclear over Mongolia, which is what it would take to stop China if they wanted to annex the country.
There's no scenario where China doesn't get Taiwan, unfortunately for the people there.
People have been saying that for 69 years. I'm not saying it's a disturbing possibility, or that people shouldn't be preparing for it. But it's not as likely as you seem to think.
There's no comparison to the Crimea situation. Crimea was overwhelmingly pro-Russian, and had a strong independence streak (see: the sovereignty referendum of 1994). An amphibious invasion against a largely hostile population is an entirely different matter, and would not be pretty, even for a large power like China. There's also the small matter of the US navy and Air Force.
I also don't think the US (or Japan) are keen on moving the focus of Chinas expansion from Taiwan to the Senkakus, which is what would happen next.
There's a lot of factors at play, it's a larger issue than just comparing two mismatched militaries.
One of the strategies is to keep Taiwan itself armed. Civilians like us can't know this, but it has been hypothesized that one of the levers being used on China with regard to North Korea's development of nuclear weapons is explaining to them that if North Korea goes nuclear, they can expect Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and who knows who else to go nuclear, either via local development of the weaponry or via assisted development from the US, if not outright turning weapons over.
After all, one imagines that if they really put their mind to it, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea could all go nuclear in a period measured in small single-digit months. They really aren't that hard [1]. If, indeed, they aren't already effectively nuclear. (We'd probably know if they'd ever tested a weapon. We wouldn't necessarily know if they'd actually built one. If I were them, I totally would have.)
One of the interesting aspects of the whole Inevitable Rise of China narrative storyline is that it has been predicated on their continuing to develop and primarily use soft power. I tend to agree if they focused on that, they have many avenues available for major growth, if not outright exceeding the US in power, certainly by the end of the 21st century. The equations for all of that have to be reconsidered from scratch if they become a dictatorship, become subject to the whims of a single man, and decide to primarily pursue hard power. If they become outright aggressively belligerent, they are surrounded by countries powerful enough to at least put a dent in their ambitions in Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and India, all of whom are already generally US allies and would be chased into the US's arms fully by a belligerent China. China is not currently powerful enough to take on that coalition, nor is it clear to me where they would get allies for that push. (It seems unlikely that the EU would full-throatedly throw in their lot with China. Russia, other than being nuclear, isn't really a strong enough military or economic power against that sort of coalition to be the deciding factor.) Furthermore, China's internal power is IMHO more delicate than may meet the eye; if China devotes more resources into hard power internally and the middle class starts to fade, internal social unrest is going to be a major problem. Even if China manages to suppress its most overt expressions, unrest still manifests itself in many little ways.
The best move for China is slow and steady, to win the race. But if one man decides that's not fast enough, well, a lot of people could end up dying for that decision and my guess is China would still not come out on top.
> After all, one imagines that if they really put their mind to it, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea could all go nuclear in a period measured in small single-digit months
> While there are currently no known plans in Japan to produce nuclear weapons, it has been argued Japan has the technology, raw materials, and the capital to produce nuclear weapons within one year if necessary, and many analysts consider it a de facto nuclear state for this reason...
> Japan has also developed the M-V three-stage solid-fuel rocket, somewhat similar in design to the U.S. LGM-118A Peacekeeper ICBM, giving it a missile technology base. It now has an easier-to-launch second generation solid-fuel rocket, Epsilon. Japan has experience in re-entry vehicle technology...
> In 2011, former Minister of Defense Shigeru Ishiba explicitly backed the idea of Japan maintaining the capability of nuclear latency: "I don't think Japan needs to possess nuclear weapons, but it's important to maintain our commercial reactors because it would allow us to produce a nuclear warhead in a short amount of time ... It's a tacit nuclear deterrent"
I would definitely expect Japan to have completely developed plans for a nuclear weapons program, with contingencies for getting it online in the shortest amount of time possible.
I would not expect them to have actually created a device, unless they are keeping deep under the stadium somewhere below the Akira project.
Japan getting the bomb is a tricky question because post war Japanese culture has been ingrained to be very anti-war and they oppose atomic weaponry for obvious historical reasons.
Why would you tell them, until such a time that you need to tell them? They have strong deterrent value, but there is no need to let others know until such a time as the deterrent value is needed.
Having a card up your sleeve is still valuable, even if nobody knows it is there, because it means if you have to pull it out all of a sudden, it's there. Taiwan would be my A#1 pick for "country most likely to secretly have nuclear weapons" because while everyone around China has reason to be nervous at one level or another, Taiwan's clearly got the best one.
"The world" as a whole is also a bit jumpy about nuclear weapons, so pulling the card out early isn't free. If for the sake of argument Taiwan does have some prototypes lying around, they must have judged the risk of a reveal greater than the reward. But that can change swiftly.
One of the questions I find most interesting, from my civilian and total outsider position, is: How developed are the world's intelligence agencies? How good are countries at successfully keeping things secret from each other? Is it theoretically possible for Taiwan to have secretly developed a prototype bomb without China covertly knowing about it? (This is an especially interesting question in that for structural reasons, Taiwan and China have means to spy on each other relatively easily.) Is it in fact the case that everybody basically knows everything about everybody, or are there many, many successfully kept secrets? What are the probabilities of discovery? What's the appetite for risk of discovery within the relevant governments? I expect from my current position that it is simply impossible to get solid answers to these questions. It also seems to me that while the world does not care for countries overtly advertising they have a bomb, the game theory for covertly making it known to certain of your enemies that you have the bomb may be quite different.
The goal is deterrence, but deterrence doesn't work if you don't have a credible threat, which means that you have to have the credible threat, and a sufficiently insane opponent may call you on it. It's the reason why China going to a dictatorship is scary... the details of the dictatorship are irrelevant, the mere fact that one man will be in charge of the military of China is intrinsically scary. This is one place where the general bias towards inaction and other problems of a committee are advantageous; history shows that an individual is much likelier to do something really stupid for really stupid reasons than any government that is run by many people, even if there is a clear leader. A committee may fail to exploit many opportunities and may in various ways run their country into the ground, or they may even engage in misguided military adventures, but they never really rise to the level of outright evil and stupidity that an individual can muster up.
For instance, if you've got a spare hour to listen, you could do worse than this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdM3ID4m38U Which contains numerous examples of Napoleon doing stupid and evil things that cost thousands of lives and burned massive piles of reputation just to benefit himself. If you do watch that video, can you imagine a world in which that Napoleon has nukes? Or, can you imagine a world in which he has them, but doesn't use them? I can't.
So, alas, no, I can't promise that some of the really stupid wargame outcomes aren't on the table now. China could previously be modeled as reasonably rational, but that's rapidly going "poof", and yeah, that means some seriously bad outcomes are on the table, and the mere fact that they are seriously ugly doesn't take them off the table.
> What's the point of having nuclear weapons and not telling everyone?
The point is so that:
(1) You can maintain the highest ground in proliferation discussions focussed on rivals, and
(2) Reveal your own weapons quickly if the geopolitical situation shifts (either as deterrence or, should the situation shift too quickly for that, direct use to blunt an existential threat.)
> The entire point of nuclear weapons is to deter attacks.
No, it's (as with any weapon) to provide the capacity to destroy the enemy if needed.
Like any weapon, this capacity can be publicized to deter attacks, but that is not the sole purpose of the weapon, and it can't be, because deterrence cannot work if it is perceived as the sole purpose of a weapon.
> What's the point of having nuclear weapons and not telling everyone? The entire point of nuclear weapons is to deter attacks.
The ambiguity is still a valuable deterrent, and avoids the diplomatic cost of violating the NPT in peacetime, etc. That cost would doubtlessly be less if the violator was presently facing an existential threat.
IIRC, Israel follows this strategy. Everyone knows they have nukes but they've never confirmed it.
Taiwan is a first world democracy that has at least existed with its own distinct government for seventy years. A Chinese military invasion would be unprecedented in the history of the world since WWII. I wonder what such a war would signify for the postwar order.
A very sudden decline in Chinese manufacturing, that's what. With such a bold action, many if not most US and EU businesses will pull out of China, this would be no joking matter. Still not sure there would be a WW3 over Taiwan or any other small country that is not is some sort of bigger union.
> A very sudden decline in Chinese manufacturing, that's what. With such a bold action, many if not most US and EU businesses will pull out of China, this would be no joking matter.
Could that be a policy plus for China? IIRC, they have wanted to reduce their export-dependence for some time, though I'm sure that they'd prefer to accomplish it is a more gradual and controlled way.
Most recent invasions by the great powers have been against pariah states (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya) or somewhat diplomatically isolated countries that are shaky (Georgia, Ukraine, Syria). Taiwan might not have much diplomatic recognition, but it's very much economically integrated into the global economy. It's a stable democracy with one of the highest living standards. Militarily challenging the existence of such a state- that would indicate the world is slipping back into a pre-Potsdam world, where advanced nations could fight each other again.
Granted, Taiwan is much militarily weaker than China, a little similar to the Ukraine-Russian relationship, but it's also a much more stable and richer state. I think what could be comparable is if Russia really was to threaten the Baltic nations.
Vietnam just had to expend a large amount of effort to placate and reassure China, so the US could dock an aircraft carrier in Danang.
For a country as powerful and on the rise as China is, it's remarkable how insecure the CPC are about every little thing. It's an overwhelming indication of the fragility of their power and their own sense of security about their control.
this sounds like you're projecting something, honestly. I'd stray on the side of being wary of China, not dismissing them as "insecure" and "fragile." Just a dangerous mindset imo.
I don't think so. Trump for an example is very easy to see through in terms of his insecurity. People that behave a certain way while they're in extraordinary positions of power, reveal that fragility / insecurity.
China's behavior reeks of insecurity. Here they are, this massive, extremely powerful, rapidly growing economic juggernaut, and they behave like a scared mouse about the South China Sea (as though they really needed to steal that territory from their neighbors), about Vietnam & the US (as though Vietnam could ever threaten them), about the smallest slight from Japan or South Korea (who cares). It's incredibly revealing.
Besides the obviousness of China's reactions and behavior and what it reveals, authoritarian regimes are universally wildly insecure. The people that seek authoritarian positions of power are similarly universally insecure. Take Stalin, he was like a man-child in terms of insecurity, and most dictators you can name from the last century were likewise, that includes everyone from Saddam to Putin (look at his recent tantrum performance, putting on a visual display of Russia nuking the US at his state of the nation speech, trying his best to hide vast insecurity).
Your comment breaks the site rule against insinuating astroturfing or shillage. We enforce that pretty rigorously because it's a poison that can destroy the whole community if allowed to. So would you please not do it again, regardless of how wrong someone is or seems?
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Overwhelmingly, though, when users here think they smell astroturfers, shills, spies, bots, and foreign agents, what they're really encountering is the diversity of opinion on this site. HN is deeply divided on most divisive issues, just like society at large is—or rather, societies, because it's a majority international site.
Most of us organize our lives to avoid having opposing opinions in our face all the time. Consequently, when we do encounter them on a site like HN which isn't siloed—i.e. doesn't have any mechanism like subreddits or follow/block—it feels bad and we resort too quickly to the belief that these other people can't possibly be posting in good faith. Mostly, though, they are. The community is just divided that way.
Is it disturbing from a US POV, or generally speaking? Because if I recall correctly, the US military spending has gone up significantly as well, also it's projected to rise even further in the future.
On a related note, could someone explain to me how Russia manages to stay a threat with a military budget that's about 6% of the US budget? Or does it only seem to be that smaller because their soldiers are payed less?
> On a related note, could someone explain to me how Russia manages to stay a threat with a military budget that's about 6% of the US budget?
Total speculation: the US may spend more on R&D to develop unproven ideas into functional systems (with a lot of failure and trial and error). Then Russia can follows those now-proven development paths without needing to spend nearly as much on dead ends or original research.
> On a related note, could someone explain to me how Russia manages to stay a threat with a military budget that's about 6% of the US budget?
Because Russia: (1) has ICBMs, which makes it a strategic global threat, even though they can't directly control territory that way, (2) because Russia has a large and capable conventional military than makes it a strong regional power threatening US interests and allies (it can't challenge the US on global force projection, which is the real driver of US military cost.)
> Or does it only seem to be that smaller because their soldiers are payed less?
Soldier and suppliers being paid less is a factor, too, but the big factor in the fundamental asymmetry between what is necessary to be a regional power and what is necessary to be able to respond to threats by regional powers everywhere in the world.
And Russia can apparently influence world opinions and politics to a major unknown degree. Cyber security tends to get the short end of the budget stick, but Russians seem to excel at it.
I read an article that says that Russia would be the country that benefits the most from US tariffs on import goods, because the EU must retaliate and therefore is much more likely to lift the sanctions of, of Russia.
Didn't want to believe it that the US government could be under Russian influence, but this move could very well prove that to some degree, or it just so happens that Trumps way of doing this aligns perfectly with their interest. On other note, people might just be reading into it too much, as it could all just be a move to, gain popularity in the US, thinking short term rather than long term.
EDIT: also recently watched a youtube video from a Google employee that says that the US government, just can't compete with big corporations for the talent pool, because government wages are limited, so yeah that certainly could be a issue for you guys.
A couple of friends of mine worked as hardware engineers in Russian military (or, to be exact, some subsidiary). They later moved on to Intel and Nvidia, and overall you can consider them quite capable CPU engineers (I never got the hang of what exactly they were doing, and a lot of it was under NDA).
While working there, they got less than $10k annually. If they would be able to get H1B, it's my understanding they'd get at least $100k.
While a lot of folks move to commercial sector and other countries, there a lot of people staying there, despite low salaries. Doing essentially the same job that their counterparts in US are doing, quite often for 10 times less money.
Expenses are also lower, right? Basics like housing, food, utilities. Even in the west few actually need the bloated budgets they say they do. "Oh I can't live on 60K/year!". Give me a break.
Depends on the quality of life you're aiming at. Rent is certainly cheaper than in SF, NY and London, but isn't that far off from other american and european cities. Still, you can't compare even rents easily, because while european and american renters usually talk about one-bedroom apartments and sometimes don't even mention a common room, here apartments are measured in rooms (not bedrooms) and in my experience are usually smaller. Personally, I pay about $1k for one-room apartment, but it's 15 minutes walking distance from the office, in a very nice neighborhood, furniture and a view; typical rate would be $500 per month or so.
The majority of US military spending is on soldiers and things related to soldiers (VA care, housing, retirement, education, etc). Most people think the US is spending all of that money on hardware, when that's not the case.
Incomes and general costs related to soldiers in Russia are even lower proportionally compared to the ratio of the per capita output gap between the US and Russia. Russia doesn't take very good care of their soldiers in most regards. If you divert a higher share of your military spending to R&D and hardware, as opposed to soldiers, you could close the gap some (and the US wastes plenty of money on unnecessary things; so if Russia is more careful about that, and chooses to focus more on what they can really afford to make a dent in, they can further close the gap).
It doesn't just disturb the US, but every country surrounding China that is dominated by the strongest power in the region. The weaker countries have no choice but to accept unfavorable trade deals, give up ocean territory away from what is the accepted as international convention, etc.
China is big. China being ran by a dictator becomes a big bully.
Just because the US does it doesn't make it right, and it doesn't make it any less concerning for the other countries in the region. Moral relativism isn't a good defense.
It's a lot worse than that. The US has been a superpower for ~75 years. In that time, the US hasn't been annexing territory in Latin America (and yes, the US is guilty of repeatedly meddling in the affairs of nations in Latin America, and it deserves all the flack it gets for it).
The Monroe Doctrine for example has never included a drive to conquer Latin America and annex it. That doctrine is about driving out European colonialism. The territorial integrity of countries in Latin America has been well served by that shield. If you're Venezuela and your entire nation has collapsed (which it has), you don't have to fear someone conquering you due to extreme weakness and annexing you: the US would never allow that and everyone knows it. Historically, at nearly any other time or place, Venezuela would get invaded and conquered while they're so extraordinarily weak (they have the largest oil reserves on earth after all).
If the US were to behave like China is already (much less what might come next), the US would be threatening to annex Toronto and Vancouver, along with Baja Mexico and the entire Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea.
We don't have to wait for bad behavior out of China. They just used their military to steal territory about four times the size of Texas from their neighbors.
Not the best examples. The US entertained annexing Canada and did annex large swathes of Mexico (not in the last 75 years, true, if you want to arbitrarily draw the line there). China has plenty of stable agreed borders with weak and troubled neighbors. You have your rose colored views but they are somewhat laughable.
I made no recommendation about doing what others do, just pointing out some facts, why did everyone trip out defensively? Maybe it's the guilty conscience speaking.
And it is guilty conscience because you know that those problematic actions netted the aggressor (the most successful ones at any rate) plenty of benefits that many people still enjoy to this day.
I don't think the world should go down this road, and there are such things as international norms. That's why when one country ignores them continually and also gains from doing so, it becomes very disadvantageous to refrain and tempting to emulate. In that regard it absolutely matters to talk about the fact that "the US did it" and still does in a another way. Same goes for China or Russia.
> The Monroe Doctrine was a United States policy of opposing European colonialism in the Americas beginning in 1823. It stated that further efforts by European nations to take control of any independent state in North or South America would be viewed as "the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States." .... The Doctrine was issued on December 2, 1823 at a time when nearly all Latin American colonies of Spain and Portugal had achieved, or were at the point of gaining, independence from the Portuguese and Spanish Empires.
One of the proclaimed reasons for which Japan invaded Asia in the Second World War was to oppose European nations (Japan included Russia and the US in this) colonizing Asia. I am sure to Japan that didn't (and if you probe Japanese deeply, still doesn't) sound very bully-like. Yet, we know what happened.
Let's not beat around the bush. This is a rising country's way of saying, I pwn my backyard (so you can't pwn it) and I will use my might to defend it. Of course the one saying that doesn't sound like a bully to himself.
> One of the proclaimed reasons for which Japan invaded Asia in the Second World War was to oppose European nations
Boy, what a false equivalence.
More from Wikipedia:
> The reaction in Latin America to the Monroe Doctrine was generally favorable but in some occasions suspicious. John Crow, author of The Epic of Latin America, states, "Simón Bolívar himself, still in the midst of his last campaign against the Spaniards, Santander in Colombia, Rivadavia in Argentina, Victoria in Mexico—leaders of the emancipation movement everywhere—received Monroe's words with sincerest gratitude".
This is an important point. The Monroe Doctrine wasn't a pretext to invasion and domination, it was actually assistance against those things. The people protected by it welcomed it.
Fast forward to the present day: Vietnam just hosted a US aircraft carrier, in a very symbolic move. It's not looking for China's help to drive the US out. China is in fact upping the ante in territorial disputes with its neighbors. China looks like a lot more like Japan in the 1930s than the US in the 1830s.
> This is an important point. The Monroe Doctrine wasn't a pretext to invasion and domination, it was actually assistance against those things. The people protected by it welcomed it.
Nah, it was just empty posturing at the time.
Once the US had the capacity to put teeth into it (which wasn't for a long time), it became a pretext for invasion and domination, though.
>On a related note, could someone explain to me how Russia manages to stay a threat with a military budget that's about 6% of the US budget? Or does it only seem to be that smaller because their soldiers are payed less?
Never underestimate the sheer waste and incompetence that the US Government is capable of achieving. My general model is that we get about ten cents in value for every dollar spent. So, all Russia needs to do is break even, and they would achieve close to military might of the US.
I don't know what 100% efficiency means. You italicized it, so it must mean something to you. But I was talking about return on investment. The US loses 90% of the money it invests, whereas, for example, companies like Boeing make money with their investments. So, all Russia would need to do it not lose money they invest. That's not what 100% efficiency means to me, but it's a very achievable goal.
It's a concern because anything that challenges absolute dominance of the US-led order is considered destabilizing and threatening, but there is an asterisk, as in, "by whom"?
If you happen to benefit or be happy with the US-led order, say an ally or vassal (military, economic, or just ideological), then you will feel the same way, naturally. If you are not, you are not so concerned.
Can you elaborate more on why China's increasing military budget is a disturbing sign to you?
China spends a mere 1.9% of its GDP in 2016 and that number is smaller than from Vietnam, Korea, India even Singapore [0]. To me China is only trying catching up its neighbors.
BTW Japan's PM has just submitted his 2018 Military Budget and if approved would be the 6th "straight annual increase" [1].
The 1.9% figure you're quoting, is almost universally regarded to be an undercount, aka a lie. At best their actual military spending figures are very fuzzy.
"The Chinese, for example, do not count their research-and-development expenditures, the considerable amount they pay for foreign military purchases, the huge subsidies for their defense industry (which is composed mostly of enterprises owned by the state), or their spending on the Chinese coast guard despite many of their “maritime law enforcement” ships being in effect naval vessels"
In the Foreign Policy article you are quoting: "Although China’s official 2012 defense budget is $106 billion, ...the Pentagon places China’s total military spending at somewhere between $120 and $180 billion."
So we take the number in the middle ($150 billion) and assume it's always a 50% undercut (extremely inaccurate estimate), this will put China's 2016 budget to 1.92%*1.5=2.88%, still lower than Singapore's.
Are you seriously comparing Singapore's relative military spending to China's? There's got to be a point where % mean nothing, and this is definitely it.
Singapore could spend it's whole GDP on the military and China can still wipe it off the face of the Earth :/
What are you talking about? The most aggressive country since WW2 has been a representative democracy with 8 year term limits. And before 1900, aside from Ancient Greece and Rome, there's basically no examples of people with term limits.
Personally, the big thing I find scary about him is that he abolished term limits for himself. Oh, yeah, and he enshrined his thinking in the constitution.
Why should length of rule be such a large part of my opinion of him? Well, let's pick a different leader. Suppose Trump wanted to change the US Constitution so that he could remain president for an unlimited time. Would that set off alarm bells for you? It would for me.
Why would it set off alarm bells? Because that leader thinks that he needs more time in office than the rules allow, and is willing to alter the rules to do what he wants.
Also, why does he want it? One option is that he thinks that the country needs his leadership, his in particular - nobody else can do it, it has to be him. Such people have an inflated view of their own importance and competence, and a diminished sense of others' importance and competence. That often doesn't end well - the leader thinks they have no need to listed to anyone else.
The other option for "why do they think they need it" is worse - they just want the power, and are willing to remove all obstacles to get and keep it. The point of their power is to keep their power, not what is good for the country. That usually works out badly for the country.
This is a sign that Xi Jinping wants to become a dictator, and it concerns other countries if a giant country like China with a massive military is controlled by a dictator with unlimited power. China has every right to have a large military to defend itself, but a dictator might use the military to be aggressive to other countries.
China's GDP is several times bigger[1] than Vietnam, Korea, India, and Singapore, so spending a smaller percentage is still a larger absolute amount. Even India, the closest competitor that you listed is only 1/5 as big by GDP, and in absolute terms has a smaller military.
China has always been ruled by dynasties. I don't see any specific reason why it should change under Xi. It is a wet dream of USA to bring instability to China to weaken rising dragon.
What make you think that being under monarchy Europe would yield different result? China is a great example of being a communist state where people's life is getting better and better. Political stability is a key to economic growth.
China is only growing economically to the extent that it's relaxed its socialist, authoritarian policies. As soon as it reasserts them, all that growth will go away. The fact that people's lives are improving is not sufficient evidence that the government is benevolent.
There is only one thing that reliably predicts human behavior: incentives. The incentives of the communist party are much more weakly aligned with the welfare of their people than those in democratic countries. It's as simple as that.
I must be missing something, top reply in this post shows exactly opposite - there is no relaxation of authoritarian policies. They tighten freedoms to be stable.
Relative to say, the 1980s, China is less authoritarian. I'm not in any way excusing or diminishing their authoritarianness , btw. I find it truly frightening, and reprehensible. However, what i'm worried about is that they've found a way to thread the needle such that they may maintain most of their authoritarian surveillance state, while also getting solid economic growth.
In the past, in order to develop a modern economy, it's been necessary for authoritarian states to relax their grip substantially. China may have found a path forward that allows them to relax substantially less than in the past, and that deeply concerns me, because it may mean that the liberalizing effects of progress are muted in that part of the world - and eventually, maybe the rest.
China is a way older than Europe. After all this damage Europe did to China(think Opium wars) i am happy to see China found its OWN way to success. And being one of the greatest economy in the world, why would it even listen to the West?
See other articles cited in the parent comment regarding human rights abuses and censorship for reasons as to why any military increase in China is not good.
It is disturbing because China did not hesitate to kill 10000 of their own people in 1989 on a shoestring budget, and faced no consequence. Who knows what they would do to Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, etc.
If we are on the subject of what crimes against humanity should prevent a country getting what kind of weapon, Asia-raping Japan is on the brink of acquiring nukes according to some comments below, do you find that disturbing?
Sorry for the whataboutism but I think how each country is perceived when spending money on military is worth discussing.
Yes. But Japan has been mostly, um, "inert" and peaceful since WW2. China's history since WW2, to this day, has been one of one atrocity after another. Things seem to be getting worse with Winnie the Pooh declaring him eternal president.
Also, if Japan was Asia raping in WW2, China is China-raping now.
Japan is still bound by article 9 of it's constitution but let us not pretend that they haven't been trying to get rid of that article or sent their defense force to play war in the middle east "strictly for defensive purposes".
That being said; between the two, China today is more like Japan during WWII than Japan today is.
>but let us not pretend that they haven't been trying to get rid of that article or sent their defense force to play war in the middle east "strictly for defensive purposes".
The PM and his party (the LDP) in coalition with the Komeito party have been trying to push that for years, without success. Mostly because the Japanese people don't seem to support it.
And to be fair, revising Article 9 and not going on a romp through the Middle East is also an option. I can see the rationale for doing so, besides right-wing nationalism on Japan's part.
> And to be fair, revising Article 9 and not going on a romp through the Middle East is also an option. I can see the rationale for doing so, besides right-wing nationalism on Japan's part.
That's definitely a possibility, however removing Article 9 is seen as a threat by China and might be a tactical error. Japan hasn't had any trouble building the defense force. If anything having Article 9 in place is plausible deniability for hostilities against China.
I highly doubt China will start a war, its not financially positive, unless they wanted to just expend some of their excess population.
I rather think domination via trade, investment, manufacturing and economical means is more plausible because thats what they're doing right now and they have more resources and capabilities to do more.
As well, its never good to fight a land war in Asia, korea, afghanistan, vietnam, cambodia and others has demonstrated that, as from a military perspective, you would be losing lives trying to police an area where locals have a more-than-significant population advantage over you.
Modern military tactics are no longer invade via land forces with air as support but rather spread fake news via social media and watch for signs of weakness in cyber structures.
> BTW Japan's PM has just submitted his 2018 Military Budget and if approved would be the 6th "straight annual increase"
China's 2016 GDP was 11.2 Trillion USD and their Military budget was 1.9% or 212 Billion USD.
Japan's 2016 GDP was 4.9 Trillion USD and their Military budget was 0.9% or 44 Billion USD.
Japan spends 20% of what China does.
Part of Japan's military spending goes directly towards maintaining US Military Bases in Japan. Starting in 2019 they won't pay to maintain US bases AND their budget will be limited to 0.8% of GDP. (See your own article for reference)
Let's also not forget that Japanese constitution currently forbids them from using their military to settle international disputes.[0] In other words Japan can't attack or declare war on anyone and their military can only be used for defensive purposes.
> Can you elaborate more on why China's increasing military budget is a disturbing sign to you?
China is propping up North Korea[1] who launches ICBMs over Japan for fun.[2]
China and Russia are holding naval military exercises in Japan's backyard.[3]
China has been building up it's Navy.
China has become increasingly aggressive in territorial disputes with others.
Would you please stop using HN for political and national battle? You've been doing it a lot, and it's not what this site is for. As such discussions get more predictable (such as when people dump boilerplate political links into comment threads), they get both less interesting and more flame-prone, a double whammy of destruction for what we care about here.
I'm reading a very good book called "China Dream: Great Power Thinking and Strategic Power Posture in the Post-American Era"
I haven't finished it so I'll save you all from a premature review, but from what I have read so far I believe we need a more serious national conversation on China and the role that technology companies play in enabling dictatorships.
I also think in light of recent events I think we'd benefit from people educating themselves on the actual state of free trade with respect to China, China is far more protectionist than the US, but if we try to do something about it, it's considered to be starting a trade war.
When it comes to trade what matters is whether or not you meet your treaty obligations. It's a rules based process, where you agree the rules and have some arbitration process, e.g. through the WTO.
On that basis, what matters is whether China is following the rules it, and everyone else, agreed to. If you think some one is cheating you arbitrate. We made a deal.
Trump is intent on blatantly breaking the rules the US has agreed to, and breaking the deals it committed to. That is important because companies invest billions of dollars based on the rules countries agree on trade. Arbitrarily change the rules with no warning and those billions of dollars of investment can become worthless and the jobs associated with them lost in Canada, the EU and countries all over the world aside from China.
I strongly disagree. I believe what matters is, or should be, whether the current arrangement that has been "agreed to", is objectively fair or not.
What is in the best interests of wealthy influential people and corporations may not be in the best interests of overall society. Maximizing GDP is not necessarily in the best interests of overall society.
I think this article makes some good points on whether "what we've agreed to" is actually "fair", and there are numerous other articles like it, but if an alien from another planet was to come here and listen to public discourse on the topic, they'd be left with the impression that there is no debate to be had.
It may be difficult to determine what is "objectively fair" in a complex globalized world, but it seems to me like there is a coordinated effort to avoid a conversation on the topic getting any kind of traction.
> what matters is whether China is following the rules it, and everyone else, agreed to
That's incorrect. China is failing, to an extraordinary degree, to comply with what it said that it would do in being allowed into the WTO. Namely, opening up their economy in terms of full and equal foreign access. At every step, they've refused to go forward with that. As it turns out, most likely, they were lying and buying time. Their goal is clearly to get large enough to not have to ever comply. They've been very obviously following Deng Xiaoping stated policy - 24 character strategy - of hiding their strength and biding their time.
North Korea used the same strategy to acquire its nuclear weapons. Lie, pretend you're going to do a thing, with no intention of doing the thing, buy time, get the nukes, then you no longer have to comply and or you've massively increased your bargaining position.
It's amazing how clear this is, yet so few people can see it, it makes me wonder if there would be less confusion if we didn't have two different cultures involved.
Of course, Western corporations and their executives who are profiting handsomely from it have good reason to "not notice" what's happening and continue to talk their book, but the wilful ignorance of genuinely well-meaning liberals is more complex.
I always wonder if Chinese leadership sometimes leans back and marvels at how easy it is to win when the uninformed citizens of your adversaries are in an ideological war with each other.
There is willful ignorance mostly by those profiting. But it's not as simple as "well-meaning liberals". That seems like a re-writing of history when there are plenty of examples from the left protesting these deals.
And it's a bit hard to peg who on the right/left we're talking about as high level politicians tend to blur the line when talk about trade deals. "True scotsman" and all.
Sanders was all over unfair trade deals that hurt American workers. Perhaps he would've done it in a responsible manner? If there is such a way.
Perhaps I'm remembering wrong. It seemed as if the right was all for trade deals until Trump made it popular.
> But it's not as simple as "well-meaning liberals". That seems like a re-writing of history when there are plenty of examples from the left protesting these deals.
I suppose I should have said modern "liberals", the word almost has no meaning anymore.
Bernie Sanders and Noam Chomsky are both historically very philosophically aligned with Trump on many of these topics, but many on the modern left, if you take them at their literal word, would have you believe they are some sort of alt-right hyper-capitalists.
I am of the opinion that some very powerful people have discovered a number of psychological tricks that the human mind, particularly under current Western moral beliefs, is almost completely defenseless against.
This is just how the state operates. It will never be transparent about just how threatening the Chinese are and vise versa. Ignorance is bliss within the world of global power dynamics. If you ever meet someone who works/has worked for intelligence agencies, ask them about China. Whether they will share anything verbal or not, their true feelings have already flushed across their face.
If that's true then how would you explain their obsession with the "Russian Hackers" boogeyman, while remaining completely mum on the absolutely massive economic and political threat China has become, which anyone could have seen coming well over a decade ago?
>I believe we need a more serious national conversation on China and the role that technology companies play in enabling dictatorships.
if this interests you, I recommend reading "IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation" by Edwin Black
> The party hierarchy outranks the state one. In other countries, the ministers of finance and foreign affairs (government jobs) are usually the most important ones after the president or prime minister. In China, they are not even in the top 25. Neither man is a member of the Politburo, let alone its inner sanctum, the Politburo Standing Committee. Formally, the People’s Liberation Army is controlled by the party, not the government.
It was interesting to read. Some countries have an official "balance of powers" defined in the Constitution. But even authoritarian or dictatorial regimes have an informal balance of powers. In the old Soviet Union they pretty much had the Politburo, the army and KGB. They kind of kept each other in check in strange way.
Wonder where the business interests fit in the China's balance of powers. Do large companies bribe the government officials or go through the party to get things done and how do they interact in general.
> Do large companies bribe the government officials or go through the party to get things done and how do they interact in general.
For about ~15 years before Xi fully consolidated power, that's how things routinely worked. It was run almost entirely on a bribery to get things done approach, in the business sphere.
Xi has moved the system/party on to new goals, with the business realm no longer having the same high order position that it previously did. I wouldn't want to be Jack Ma or Pony Ma in the environment that's being setup now. Alibaba and Tencent will eventually be too large for Xi's liking, if that's not already the case.
Australia's former PM, Kevin Rudd, has an excellent write-up on all of this (he has a particularly strong background regarding China):
Because Xi has circumvented several of the most important limitations (term limits, seniority) on party and state leadership, there is no system anymore. AFAIU, since Mao died, ultimate power was vested in the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC). Cycling out of leadership posts after two terms was simultaneously both the concrete recognition and reflection of where ultimate power was truly vested.
The bribery was an artifact of how power was shared in the PSC, and how the members jockeyed to maintain a balance of power. At a high level it wasn't corruption, per se, but the system through which the PSC members could exert influence when they weren't seated as the President, Chairman of the Central Military Commission, etc. It effectively operated like the checks & balances of Western institutions. If a PSC member opposed a policy preferred by the President, those backchannels to the party base and to industry was how they could push back, and ensured the posted leaders always had to acquiesce, to some degree, to the PSC members.
In as much as there was corruption, well that's the price you pay for not having a transparent system of governance with an independent civil service and independent judiciary without concentrating too much power into the hands of a (hopefully) benevolent dictator.
The problem is that all the senior leaders from the Maoist era are gone. The norms of the PSC were instituted intentionally to avoid the reemergence of Maoist extremism. This generation doesn't appreciate the critical importance of the power-sharing norms within the PSC. They think they can have their cake and eat it too: preserve the one party Communist system and provide streamlined, efficient governance, without instituting democratic, rule-of-law reforms. They apparently don't appreciate the fact that once the PSC is effectively dominated by a single individual, then the one party system is defacto extinguished--the party becomes subservient to a single individual.
More importantly, like many people they don't appreciate the fact that whether in democracy or single-party rule (which has a sort of internal democracy), some amount of organizational inefficiency is the price you must pay to keep power from centralizing. Maximum organizational efficiency can only be achieved in a dictatorship because that's the only way, theoretically, to maximally minimize transaction costs. But over the long-term history has shown that optimizing for short-term efficiency is a really bad idea and it tends to result in very inefficient long-term outcomes.
Thank you that was a good read. A nice perspective from someone who is considered "Western" but has studied and knows Xi well.
There was an interesting point made, that even though personal freedoms are being curtailed, party is consolidating its power, and ideology is emphasized more, those who reach economic prosperity will somehow demand or seek freedom and will push back. I think that's been the promise of Western-style capitalism + democracy -- we get some market capitalism going, with all its ills but that's ok, soon enough democracy will arrive.
But what if it is doesn't. What if this authoritarian mode can lead to a more efficient and effective system. (More brutal of course for individuals). That point was slightly touched in in regard to military, quoting a Bloomberg contributor, James Stavridis, a four star general ("a military under a single long term rule might have an advantage of set of figures that keep getting reshuffled every 4 years). But what if it is also economic efficiency too.
I never really understood the relationship between the party and the state in China, but this article cleared up a lot. Having a better grasp of that relationship also makes this development all the more unsettling:
> No less important, the parliament will approve what looks like a new administrative branch that merges elements of the party, government, police and judiciary into a powerful organisation called the National Supervision Commission. This will incorporate the party’s discipline-enforcement body but work closely with the courts and report to the legislature—ie, there will be no separation of powers. It will be able to interrogate, search, detain and punish any official, whether from the party or the government bureaucracy, in cases involving corruption, violations of ethics and ideological deviation.
It sounds like any state check on the power of the party that existed before will be effectively neutered by this commission.
I have seen in this on other countries. They have corruption, it is widespread. So what do the do? Well, of course have a new corruption fighting entity that combines elements from judiciary, executive (including police) and legislative branches. Soon enough, this becomes the new most corrupt entity. Because they monitor and catch lower level corrupt officials, who once caught, now have to pay much higher price to get off the hook.
I have a feeling 10 years from now Trump will be funny blip on the radar of how crazy the '10s were while Asia will be quite meaningfully transformed. I wish this was getting as much attention as BREAKING NEWS: Trump/staffer did something dumb. The (soon plausibly) richest and most populous country in the world will soon have a dictator. That's a bit scary.
It's part of the same larger pattern. The entire world seems to be moving toward totalitarianism to varying degrees. I have yet to encounter a really good explanation of why this trend is occurring across so many nations and cultures.
Hasn't that always been the case? Powerful people always wanted more power, throughout history. Now nuclear essentially makes it impossible to go to war with powerful countries, so we're stuck with bullies doing whatever they want. If the bullies are smart enough, they won't attack other powerful (i.e. nuclear) countries.
The explanation is the rise of populism following a bad economic episode. What you are seeing now has been seen in the 20's and 30's. If some good social policies had been implemented and the gains well distributed in the prior decades of growth this wouldn't be happening. But humans won't learn until forced to.
That's surely valid to some extent but I don't think it goes back far enough. I've seen this trend firmly in place since 9/11 or shortly thereafter and across virtually every segment of society.
While fussing over every misstep of the administration is a distraction, this is an unfortunate time to have a US President who seems uninterested in global politics.
The US is infighting because the electorate wants to be infighting. When the citizenry is so sheltered and content to know nothing about the world this is what happens.
We learned the wrong lesson from 9/11 buddy. Look at the TSA still going strong, all the domestic snooping, and an imperial presidency with open-ended powers unchecked by Congress. Over all the conclusion has been to not deal with the world's problems, kick everybody that might cause problems out, and close the door.
Two things give me some hope.
1. I don't think totalitarianism lends itself to economic prosperity, long term. Sure, the right authoritarian can move much faster and implement beneficial changes much more quickly than a democratic government can. But that knife cuts both ways.
2. The entire government system in China, and it's culture, heavily values stability and collective unity (hence it's desire to squash and eliminate anything that may lead to extreme reaction or departure from consensus).
But this will lead to calcification, or, if the dictator changes too much or is too heavy handed, instability is inevitable, which leads me to think that the dictator will be changed out.
Ultimately, I think that the power of any society is in the hands of the citizens, and that Chinese culture is extremely pragmatic. They may be able to be kept peaceful for a bit, but if progress starts stagnating or even reversing, changes will happen.
Naively, and based on historical data, I agree with point #1. What worries me about China is that they've had no problem--politically or technologically--collecting massive data sets on their citizenry via a level of mass surveillance that's never been reached AFAICT. On top of that, they're investing hard in artificial intelligence, and the benefits will ultimately be reaped by whoever's in charge of the datasets (in this case, the government). All of that gives them a lot of levers to control and manipulate their citizenry that has not been available to authoritarian governments yet.
I remember reading an intro to Orwell's Animal Farm that discussed Orwell's ability to see the dystopian use of technology, but couldn't see how it could liberate a citizenry from totalitarianism (like the shortwave, for example).
I think the same of this high level tech as well. I could be wrong, but I think individuals do desire freedom and agency, and as long as that desire is there in some, it's going to be hard to squash.
One of my 'in the realm of possibility' dystopian fears is that a totalitarian regime figures out how to (chemically?) keep their society docile. Ideally the populace would still be creative, to an extent, but that might not even be necessary, or compensated for by stealing innovation from other places.
One could argue that this is already sort of happening in many places, without there being a big conspiracy behind it, I guess.
I do too. Things like CRISPR scare the bejeezus out of me for reasons like you mention.
I tend to think that's the killer equation in the US culture, which is incentives that are set up for exposing stuff like this.
We don't need our journalists, politicians, scientists or any authority to be looking out for our best interest.
As long as there are ways for them to further their own self-interest in ways that go against other authorities, we have some folks watching our backs.
But in cases where you fundamentally alter someone's idea of self-interest, you're in a crazy amount of danger. And with the power one can wield, you're in for a lot of unintended consequences. Hopefully Pandora can be restrained just a bit.
See, I'd argue we've already progressed in that direction far more than we realize by reducing so much of our social world to 'transactions'. I grew up in a much more 'traditional' society and the the contrast is quite stark.
Do you mind expanding on the contrast a bit by explaining the more traditional society part?
I was born and raised in southern California, and one thing that I can consistently remember since I was a child was just how transactional southern Californians are in their relationships (as well as generally flaky, and relatively superficial; these are all common stereotypes, but in my experience, they contain a certain amount of truth).
So I know that this dynamic has not only existed for my lifetime, but also well known enough to be a stereotype, and I'm not sure how much it contributes to the larger dangers we've discussed.
'Family' would be one thing. I found that 1) the responsibilities/rights were much broader, and 2) they extended beyond just siblings, parents (and perhaps grandparents).
If one of my siblings were to have financial trouble, or to start a business, it wouldn't be strange for me to decline helping them, whereas in the more traditional culture this would be considered rather selfish. And on the latter culture, when your parents get older and less useful to society, they move in with one of their kids (and often help out with the child-rearing). Putting them in a home would be unacceptable.
Furthermore, many of these things would extend to uncles and aunts and cousins, where in my current culture it's pretty normal to only see those at 'special' family occasions.
I also found that the relationship with neighbors and small businesses in the area were a lot more 'familial' in nature: 'watching the shop while owner does x', the shop-owner getting particular products just for you, but also a sense of loyalty. If you need a haircut/pedicure/etc., and a family member offers that service, it would be considered offensive to go to another place.
Basically, a lot of the stuff that 'we' would put in the transactional sphere were often much more like how we'd interact or deal with immediate family. A lot consisted of favors you'd do, with the implicit agreement that someone should do something equivalent for you. These intricate 'networks' of favors combined with various social obligations led to ties that were much stronger, obviously, than a purely commercial interaction.
I'm rambling a bit; still early here. I suppose a good book on the matter is Debt by David Graeber, but looking at how various immigrant communities operate can also be enlightening. I've experienced similar kinds of quasi-commercial relationships with the Turkish shops in my neighborhood, for example (I would fix their computer, they'd hold on to my house key for a friend to pick up, no shopping without chatting, etc.).
Trump will be a blip provided a Congress willing to check his powers is elected to office, and doesn't itself go down the same path. It might be one election away from stacking of the courts and all that jazz. Don't count your chickens before they hatch.
I thought it was kind of odd when Trump joked that maybe the US should experiment with getting rid of term limits.
The joke he made was clearly to enrage us leftists, but it also reeked of a man who doesn't fully grasp this new situation, which is actually scary.
It was odd because China is an extremely advanced country and Xi Xinping made an extremely undemocratic, dictatorial move by abolishing term limits.
So now we have the makings of a dictator leading the largest country on Earth, commanding an extremely technologically-advanced military.
The cynic in me makes me think I don't understand Trump's joke because maybe he knows something I don't. The paranoid in me wonders, if Trump really is so misinformed.
Outside of the west, democracy is generally held in contempt. This can be dated at least as far back as Plato. Trump isn't misinformed, he believes that democracy is contemptible. And whether he is wrong is arguable.
If democracy is"contemptible" by the kinds of people that run oppressive, autocratic (soon dictatorial) Orwellian surveillance states that disappear people at the drop of a hat, I'll gladly keep my "contemptible" method of governance please.
At least we can (and do) peacefully and easily vote out our leaders for someone we'd rather have.
Let's dissect this misplaced moral superiority by comparison.
Trump's USA imprisons more people per capita than any other nation. And a disproportionately large number of those people are black men.
For five decades, it has increasingly walked back checks and balances on the executive branch.
NSA, on behalf of USG, has demonstrated the most complete surveillance of telecommunications on the planet.
The Homan Square facility was used by CPD to disappear six thousand people. This is on a tiny scale compared to the work of the Chinese state apparatus, and it was eventually shut down. But it persisted for a decade.
The USA isn't better than China by very much. Arguably, it is worse. In any case, it is a far bigger hypocrite.
The economist is completely and openly biased with all their reporting; that's why their pieces are both valuable and only part of the picture. To just scratch the surface:
> Our public agenda is liberal in the classical sense. We have supported free trade ever since our foundation in 1843 when we opposed Britain’s corn laws, which sought to keep the price of grain high by limiting imports. We have continued to advocate bold policies in favour of individual freedoms, such as same-sex marriage and legalisation of drugs, regardless of whether they are politically popular, in the belief that the force of argument will eventually prevail.
Strange as it is, centrally planned economies are kicking the West's arse right now. We're busy electing far right faux populists (like Italy yesterday) and giving money to the rich.
Not even remotely close. Let's examine the countries in question anyway.
Liberal economies: US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Italy, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, Portugal, Switzerland, Israel, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Iceland, Taiwan, Austria
Planned or otherwise heavily state controlled: China, North Korea, Cuba, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Sudan, Angola, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Egypt, Burma, Cambodia, Pakistan, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Laos, Sierra Leone, Liberia
Who doesn't love self-explanatory lists?
And speaking of giving money to the rich. China has the highest real inequality of any nation that has ever existed in world history. They have half a billion people living on less than $10 per day, and a quarter of a billion people living on less than $3 per day, while they have over 600 billionaires, including 100 billionaires in their parliament:
For those who say it's OK to be a president for life because he's a competent person: he's 64 years old. Brain deteriorates rapidly with age. The most reasonable person today can suddenly start rounding up Chinese who post memes on WeChat a year from now simply because of a normal biological process. That's where you need a system in place that strips them off power very quickly. History has had plenty Mad Kings.
The biggest problem is the precedent it sets. Once Julius Cesar made himself "first citizen" and took control over the senate, absolutely NONE of his successors relinquished power back to the Senate. ...and some of them were disastrous leaders.
I must’ve missed the part when China became a democracy. While I hold the same fear as China continues to aggressively pursue the Orwellian path, I seldom to see model governments that makes China second think its authoritarian decision. After all, I can’t envision other governments wanting to become US—-when excluding its resources. I hope we become better so we can emerge as the role model that we once were.
> I hope we become better so we can emerge as the role model that we once were.
USA is still a role model on many areas: cultural, economic, military, etc. It was never a moral role model, although that didn't deter the government of boasting about it anyway.
US debt on 6th of March 2000 was 5.7 trillions. [0]
Today it is 20.8 trillions.
And what USA has to show for the mere 15 trillions of debt?
Affordable healthcare? Free education? Absence of homeless population? Shiny new infrastructure? Thousands of kilometers of speed-rails connecting major cities?
Role model. You guys are delusional. Let me tell you something like non-american. The whole world looks at you with sheer amusement.
PS: The only economic achievement I can list is that US elites have managed to alienate with their policies half of the country, so that half decided to give country a try with some real estate tycoon who enjoys to bang pornstars in his free time. Quite an achievement indeed. 15 trillions well spent.
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[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 159 ms ] threadIf they successfully coax a response, we hurt our economic ties, if they dont, they get facevalue gains and reduce us foreign credibility.
Now that i think about it...im scared for taiwan
There's no scenario where China doesn't get Taiwan, unfortunately for the people there. The only question is what that's going to look like. The rest of the world will do nothing about it, other than wave their hands around frantically. When it happens (during Xi's lifetime), it's going to set a particularly terrible precedent that will encourage Russia to do more of the same in eastern Europe. If China then decides Mongolia too is part of greater China, who can really stop that? Nobody.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Au...
It may provide a distraction for further Russian expansion, but Russia clearly doesn't need any new foreign precedent to justify invading it's neighbors.
> If China then decides Mongolia too is part of greater China, who can really stop that? Nobody.
China taking Taiwan might not start a major power war (though given the history of such wars, I wouldn't dismiss it as easily as you do), but Mongolia is much more likely to (with Russia as the opposing major power.)
Russia gets expansion in Europe. China gets expansion in Asia. They agree to try to stay out of each others way. It certainly wouldn't be unusual, historically speaking, for very powerful authoritarian regimes to reach agreement on annexations of territory.
Granted, for a long time now Russia has harbored paranoia about their vast empty East, and that China might one day want to push into it. Russia is depopulating and China is overflowing with people. The comedy of the situation, is Russia having used the ethnic Russian setup premise to seize territory in Ukraine - China could use the same argument in various territories in Eastern Russia.
That said, I don't see Russia being willing to fight over Mongolia. China is already far too powerful and economically capable for them to do that. Russia could never come close to managing to hold off China in Mongolia, I think they know that. And I don't think Russia would be willing to go nuclear over Mongolia, which is what it would take to stop China if they wanted to annex the country.
People have been saying that for 69 years. I'm not saying it's a disturbing possibility, or that people shouldn't be preparing for it. But it's not as likely as you seem to think.
There's no comparison to the Crimea situation. Crimea was overwhelmingly pro-Russian, and had a strong independence streak (see: the sovereignty referendum of 1994). An amphibious invasion against a largely hostile population is an entirely different matter, and would not be pretty, even for a large power like China. There's also the small matter of the US navy and Air Force.
I also don't think the US (or Japan) are keen on moving the focus of Chinas expansion from Taiwan to the Senkakus, which is what would happen next.
There's a lot of factors at play, it's a larger issue than just comparing two mismatched militaries.
After all, one imagines that if they really put their mind to it, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea could all go nuclear in a period measured in small single-digit months. They really aren't that hard [1]. If, indeed, they aren't already effectively nuclear. (We'd probably know if they'd ever tested a weapon. We wouldn't necessarily know if they'd actually built one. If I were them, I totally would have.)
One of the interesting aspects of the whole Inevitable Rise of China narrative storyline is that it has been predicated on their continuing to develop and primarily use soft power. I tend to agree if they focused on that, they have many avenues available for major growth, if not outright exceeding the US in power, certainly by the end of the 21st century. The equations for all of that have to be reconsidered from scratch if they become a dictatorship, become subject to the whims of a single man, and decide to primarily pursue hard power. If they become outright aggressively belligerent, they are surrounded by countries powerful enough to at least put a dent in their ambitions in Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and India, all of whom are already generally US allies and would be chased into the US's arms fully by a belligerent China. China is not currently powerful enough to take on that coalition, nor is it clear to me where they would get allies for that push. (It seems unlikely that the EU would full-throatedly throw in their lot with China. Russia, other than being nuclear, isn't really a strong enough military or economic power against that sort of coalition to be the deciding factor.) Furthermore, China's internal power is IMHO more delicate than may meet the eye; if China devotes more resources into hard power internally and the middle class starts to fade, internal social unrest is going to be a major problem. Even if China manages to suppress its most overt expressions, unrest still manifests itself in many little ways.
The best move for China is slow and steady, to win the race. But if one man decides that's not fast enough, well, a lot of people could end up dying for that decision and my guess is China would still not come out on top.
[1]: https://io9.gizmodo.com/this-experiment-proved-that-anyone-c...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nuclear_weapon_progra...:
> While there are currently no known plans in Japan to produce nuclear weapons, it has been argued Japan has the technology, raw materials, and the capital to produce nuclear weapons within one year if necessary, and many analysts consider it a de facto nuclear state for this reason...
> Japan has also developed the M-V three-stage solid-fuel rocket, somewhat similar in design to the U.S. LGM-118A Peacekeeper ICBM, giving it a missile technology base. It now has an easier-to-launch second generation solid-fuel rocket, Epsilon. Japan has experience in re-entry vehicle technology...
> In 2011, former Minister of Defense Shigeru Ishiba explicitly backed the idea of Japan maintaining the capability of nuclear latency: "I don't think Japan needs to possess nuclear weapons, but it's important to maintain our commercial reactors because it would allow us to produce a nuclear warhead in a short amount of time ... It's a tacit nuclear deterrent"
I would not expect them to have actually created a device, unless they are keeping deep under the stadium somewhere below the Akira project.
What's the point of having nuclear weapons and not telling everyone? The entire point of nuclear weapons is to deter attacks.
I thought the entire point was to kill as many birds as possible with a single stone.
"The world" as a whole is also a bit jumpy about nuclear weapons, so pulling the card out early isn't free. If for the sake of argument Taiwan does have some prototypes lying around, they must have judged the risk of a reveal greater than the reward. But that can change swiftly.
One of the questions I find most interesting, from my civilian and total outsider position, is: How developed are the world's intelligence agencies? How good are countries at successfully keeping things secret from each other? Is it theoretically possible for Taiwan to have secretly developed a prototype bomb without China covertly knowing about it? (This is an especially interesting question in that for structural reasons, Taiwan and China have means to spy on each other relatively easily.) Is it in fact the case that everybody basically knows everything about everybody, or are there many, many successfully kept secrets? What are the probabilities of discovery? What's the appetite for risk of discovery within the relevant governments? I expect from my current position that it is simply impossible to get solid answers to these questions. It also seems to me that while the world does not care for countries overtly advertising they have a bomb, the game theory for covertly making it known to certain of your enemies that you have the bomb may be quite different.
The goal is deterrence, but deterrence doesn't work if you don't have a credible threat, which means that you have to have the credible threat, and a sufficiently insane opponent may call you on it. It's the reason why China going to a dictatorship is scary... the details of the dictatorship are irrelevant, the mere fact that one man will be in charge of the military of China is intrinsically scary. This is one place where the general bias towards inaction and other problems of a committee are advantageous; history shows that an individual is much likelier to do something really stupid for really stupid reasons than any government that is run by many people, even if there is a clear leader. A committee may fail to exploit many opportunities and may in various ways run their country into the ground, or they may even engage in misguided military adventures, but they never really rise to the level of outright evil and stupidity that an individual can muster up.
For instance, if you've got a spare hour to listen, you could do worse than this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdM3ID4m38U Which contains numerous examples of Napoleon doing stupid and evil things that cost thousands of lives and burned massive piles of reputation just to benefit himself. If you do watch that video, can you imagine a world in which that Napoleon has nukes? Or, can you imagine a world in which he has them, but doesn't use them? I can't.
So, alas, no, I can't promise that some of the really stupid wargame outcomes aren't on the table now. China could previously be modeled as reasonably rational, but that's rapidly going "poof", and yeah, that means some seriously bad outcomes are on the table, and the mere fact that they are seriously ugly doesn't take them off the table.
The point is so that:
(1) You can maintain the highest ground in proliferation discussions focussed on rivals, and
(2) Reveal your own weapons quickly if the geopolitical situation shifts (either as deterrence or, should the situation shift too quickly for that, direct use to blunt an existential threat.)
> The entire point of nuclear weapons is to deter attacks.
No, it's (as with any weapon) to provide the capacity to destroy the enemy if needed.
Like any weapon, this capacity can be publicized to deter attacks, but that is not the sole purpose of the weapon, and it can't be, because deterrence cannot work if it is perceived as the sole purpose of a weapon.
The ambiguity is still a valuable deterrent, and avoids the diplomatic cost of violating the NPT in peacetime, etc. That cost would doubtlessly be less if the violator was presently facing an existential threat.
IIRC, Israel follows this strategy. Everyone knows they have nukes but they've never confirmed it.
Unfortunately Trump is no Khrushchev, and Xi is no JFK either. A terrifying scenario.
Could that be a policy plus for China? IIRC, they have wanted to reduce their export-dependence for some time, though I'm sure that they'd prefer to accomplish it is a more gradual and controlled way.
Granted, Taiwan is much militarily weaker than China, a little similar to the Ukraine-Russian relationship, but it's also a much more stable and richer state. I think what could be comparable is if Russia really was to threaten the Baltic nations.
For a country as powerful and on the rise as China is, it's remarkable how insecure the CPC are about every little thing. It's an overwhelming indication of the fragility of their power and their own sense of security about their control.
China's behavior reeks of insecurity. Here they are, this massive, extremely powerful, rapidly growing economic juggernaut, and they behave like a scared mouse about the South China Sea (as though they really needed to steal that territory from their neighbors), about Vietnam & the US (as though Vietnam could ever threaten them), about the smallest slight from Japan or South Korea (who cares). It's incredibly revealing.
Besides the obviousness of China's reactions and behavior and what it reveals, authoritarian regimes are universally wildly insecure. The people that seek authoritarian positions of power are similarly universally insecure. Take Stalin, he was like a man-child in terms of insecurity, and most dictators you can name from the last century were likewise, that includes everyone from Saddam to Putin (look at his recent tantrum performance, putting on a visual display of Russia nuking the US at his state of the nation speech, trying his best to hide vast insecurity).
and sharetea was on to something in 2016... even if the account got banned.
If you think an account is abusing HN, you're welcome to email us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can look at the data. Astroturfing is a bannable offense—but we need to find evidence of it. So is using HN primarily for political, ideological, or national battle. All this is at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Overwhelmingly, though, when users here think they smell astroturfers, shills, spies, bots, and foreign agents, what they're really encountering is the diversity of opinion on this site. HN is deeply divided on most divisive issues, just like society at large is—or rather, societies, because it's a majority international site.
Most of us organize our lives to avoid having opposing opinions in our face all the time. Consequently, when we do encounter them on a site like HN which isn't siloed—i.e. doesn't have any mechanism like subreddits or follow/block—it feels bad and we resort too quickly to the belief that these other people can't possibly be posting in good faith. Mostly, though, they are. The community is just divided that way.
On a related note, could someone explain to me how Russia manages to stay a threat with a military budget that's about 6% of the US budget? Or does it only seem to be that smaller because their soldiers are payed less?
Total speculation: the US may spend more on R&D to develop unproven ideas into functional systems (with a lot of failure and trial and error). Then Russia can follows those now-proven development paths without needing to spend nearly as much on dead ends or original research.
Kinda like this link that another user posted here: https://io9.gizmodo.com/this-experiment-proved-that-anyone-c...
AFAIK, there has always been a lot of Russian copying/mimicry of US technology, from the Tu-4 to the Buran, but little in the other direction.
Because Russia: (1) has ICBMs, which makes it a strategic global threat, even though they can't directly control territory that way, (2) because Russia has a large and capable conventional military than makes it a strong regional power threatening US interests and allies (it can't challenge the US on global force projection, which is the real driver of US military cost.)
> Or does it only seem to be that smaller because their soldiers are payed less?
Soldier and suppliers being paid less is a factor, too, but the big factor in the fundamental asymmetry between what is necessary to be a regional power and what is necessary to be able to respond to threats by regional powers everywhere in the world.
Didn't want to believe it that the US government could be under Russian influence, but this move could very well prove that to some degree, or it just so happens that Trumps way of doing this aligns perfectly with their interest. On other note, people might just be reading into it too much, as it could all just be a move to, gain popularity in the US, thinking short term rather than long term.
EDIT: also recently watched a youtube video from a Google employee that says that the US government, just can't compete with big corporations for the talent pool, because government wages are limited, so yeah that certainly could be a issue for you guys.
80/20 rule - 20% of the budget gets you 80% of the capability. ofc these are not accurate percentages
not to say this doesn't happen in Russia, but everyone talks about how much excessive waste there is in the US military
like you say, cost for soldiers will be much less there
While working there, they got less than $10k annually. If they would be able to get H1B, it's my understanding they'd get at least $100k.
While a lot of folks move to commercial sector and other countries, there a lot of people staying there, despite low salaries. Doing essentially the same job that their counterparts in US are doing, quite often for 10 times less money.
Incomes and general costs related to soldiers in Russia are even lower proportionally compared to the ratio of the per capita output gap between the US and Russia. Russia doesn't take very good care of their soldiers in most regards. If you divert a higher share of your military spending to R&D and hardware, as opposed to soldiers, you could close the gap some (and the US wastes plenty of money on unnecessary things; so if Russia is more careful about that, and chooses to focus more on what they can really afford to make a dent in, they can further close the gap).
China is big. China being ran by a dictator becomes a big bully.
The Monroe Doctrine for example has never included a drive to conquer Latin America and annex it. That doctrine is about driving out European colonialism. The territorial integrity of countries in Latin America has been well served by that shield. If you're Venezuela and your entire nation has collapsed (which it has), you don't have to fear someone conquering you due to extreme weakness and annexing you: the US would never allow that and everyone knows it. Historically, at nearly any other time or place, Venezuela would get invaded and conquered while they're so extraordinarily weak (they have the largest oil reserves on earth after all).
If the US were to behave like China is already (much less what might come next), the US would be threatening to annex Toronto and Vancouver, along with Baja Mexico and the entire Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea.
We don't have to wait for bad behavior out of China. They just used their military to steal territory about four times the size of Texas from their neighbors.
Here's some context for that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Revolution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Texas
One country doing terrible things intervening in other countries is not an excuse for other countries to get involved and do the same thing.
And it is guilty conscience because you know that those problematic actions netted the aggressor (the most successful ones at any rate) plenty of benefits that many people still enjoy to this day.
I don't think the world should go down this road, and there are such things as international norms. That's why when one country ignores them continually and also gains from doing so, it becomes very disadvantageous to refrain and tempting to emulate. In that regard it absolutely matters to talk about the fact that "the US did it" and still does in a another way. Same goes for China or Russia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine
> The Monroe Doctrine was a United States policy of opposing European colonialism in the Americas beginning in 1823. It stated that further efforts by European nations to take control of any independent state in North or South America would be viewed as "the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States." .... The Doctrine was issued on December 2, 1823 at a time when nearly all Latin American colonies of Spain and Portugal had achieved, or were at the point of gaining, independence from the Portuguese and Spanish Empires.
Doesn't sound very bully-like.
Let's not beat around the bush. This is a rising country's way of saying, I pwn my backyard (so you can't pwn it) and I will use my might to defend it. Of course the one saying that doesn't sound like a bully to himself.
Boy, what a false equivalence.
More from Wikipedia:
> The reaction in Latin America to the Monroe Doctrine was generally favorable but in some occasions suspicious. John Crow, author of The Epic of Latin America, states, "Simón Bolívar himself, still in the midst of his last campaign against the Spaniards, Santander in Colombia, Rivadavia in Argentina, Victoria in Mexico—leaders of the emancipation movement everywhere—received Monroe's words with sincerest gratitude".
This is an important point. The Monroe Doctrine wasn't a pretext to invasion and domination, it was actually assistance against those things. The people protected by it welcomed it.
Fast forward to the present day: Vietnam just hosted a US aircraft carrier, in a very symbolic move. It's not looking for China's help to drive the US out. China is in fact upping the ante in territorial disputes with its neighbors. China looks like a lot more like Japan in the 1930s than the US in the 1830s.
Nah, it was just empty posturing at the time.
Once the US had the capacity to put teeth into it (which wasn't for a long time), it became a pretext for invasion and domination, though.
Never underestimate the sheer waste and incompetence that the US Government is capable of achieving. My general model is that we get about ten cents in value for every dollar spent. So, all Russia needs to do is break even, and they would achieve close to military might of the US.
US military expenditures are also very disturbing.
Yes and no. Remember how much goes on white elephants like the F35 and the Zumwalt-class. Does China have programmes like that?
https://goo.gl/images/sQPFFy
If you happen to benefit or be happy with the US-led order, say an ally or vassal (military, economic, or just ideological), then you will feel the same way, naturally. If you are not, you are not so concerned.
It doesn't make sense to compare amounts directly - labour cost (and cost of life) in Russia is way cheaper.
And if we will compare %% of GDP - for the last decade Russia is spending same percentage (or even more) compared to US.
China spends a mere 1.9% of its GDP in 2016 and that number is smaller than from Vietnam, Korea, India even Singapore [0]. To me China is only trying catching up its neighbors.
BTW Japan's PM has just submitted his 2018 Military Budget and if approved would be the 6th "straight annual increase" [1].
[0]: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?end=2...
[1]: https://thediplomat.com/2017/08/whats-in-japans-record-2018-...
Disclaimer: I'm Chinese.
"The Chinese, for example, do not count their research-and-development expenditures, the considerable amount they pay for foreign military purchases, the huge subsidies for their defense industry (which is composed mostly of enterprises owned by the state), or their spending on the Chinese coast guard despite many of their “maritime law enforcement” ships being in effect naval vessels"
https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/07/united-states-defense...
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/hy-chinas-military-budge...
http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/05/23/5-things-the-pentagon-is...
https://chinapower.csis.org/military-spending/
So we take the number in the middle ($150 billion) and assume it's always a 50% undercut (extremely inaccurate estimate), this will put China's 2016 budget to 1.92%*1.5=2.88%, still lower than Singapore's.
Singapore could spend it's whole GDP on the military and China can still wipe it off the face of the Earth :/
Look to all of human history and you'll find your answer.
Why should length of rule be such a large part of my opinion of him? Well, let's pick a different leader. Suppose Trump wanted to change the US Constitution so that he could remain president for an unlimited time. Would that set off alarm bells for you? It would for me.
Why would it set off alarm bells? Because that leader thinks that he needs more time in office than the rules allow, and is willing to alter the rules to do what he wants.
Also, why does he want it? One option is that he thinks that the country needs his leadership, his in particular - nobody else can do it, it has to be him. Such people have an inflated view of their own importance and competence, and a diminished sense of others' importance and competence. That often doesn't end well - the leader thinks they have no need to listed to anyone else.
The other option for "why do they think they need it" is worse - they just want the power, and are willing to remove all obstacles to get and keep it. The point of their power is to keep their power, not what is good for the country. That usually works out badly for the country.
China's GDP is several times bigger[1] than Vietnam, Korea, India, and Singapore, so spending a smaller percentage is still a larger absolute amount. Even India, the closest competitor that you listed is only 1/5 as big by GDP, and in absolute terms has a smaller military.
[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?order=wb...
China has always been ruled by dynasties. I don't see any specific reason why it should change under Xi. It is a wet dream of USA to bring instability to China to weaken rising dragon.
There is only one thing that reliably predicts human behavior: incentives. The incentives of the communist party are much more weakly aligned with the welfare of their people than those in democratic countries. It's as simple as that.
In the past, in order to develop a modern economy, it's been necessary for authoritarian states to relax their grip substantially. China may have found a path forward that allows them to relax substantially less than in the past, and that deeply concerns me, because it may mean that the liberalizing effects of progress are muted in that part of the world - and eventually, maybe the rest.
The exact same thing was true of the West until about 100 years ago.
India is a nuclear power. Then again so is the UK and Argentina still invaded, so maybe that's not so much of a deterrent.
Okay, that's at least two countries that killed 10000+ of their own people since WW2.
Sorry for the whataboutism but I think how each country is perceived when spending money on military is worth discussing.
Also, if Japan was Asia raping in WW2, China is China-raping now.
That being said; between the two, China today is more like Japan during WWII than Japan today is.
The PM and his party (the LDP) in coalition with the Komeito party have been trying to push that for years, without success. Mostly because the Japanese people don't seem to support it.
And to be fair, revising Article 9 and not going on a romp through the Middle East is also an option. I can see the rationale for doing so, besides right-wing nationalism on Japan's part.
That's definitely a possibility, however removing Article 9 is seen as a threat by China and might be a tactical error. Japan hasn't had any trouble building the defense force. If anything having Article 9 in place is plausible deniability for hostilities against China.
I rather think domination via trade, investment, manufacturing and economical means is more plausible because thats what they're doing right now and they have more resources and capabilities to do more.
As well, its never good to fight a land war in Asia, korea, afghanistan, vietnam, cambodia and others has demonstrated that, as from a military perspective, you would be losing lives trying to police an area where locals have a more-than-significant population advantage over you.
Modern military tactics are no longer invade via land forces with air as support but rather spread fake news via social media and watch for signs of weakness in cyber structures.
> BTW Japan's PM has just submitted his 2018 Military Budget and if approved would be the 6th "straight annual increase"
China's 2016 GDP was 11.2 Trillion USD and their Military budget was 1.9% or 212 Billion USD.
Japan's 2016 GDP was 4.9 Trillion USD and their Military budget was 0.9% or 44 Billion USD.
Japan spends 20% of what China does.
Part of Japan's military spending goes directly towards maintaining US Military Bases in Japan. Starting in 2019 they won't pay to maintain US bases AND their budget will be limited to 0.8% of GDP. (See your own article for reference)
Let's also not forget that Japanese constitution currently forbids them from using their military to settle international disputes.[0] In other words Japan can't attack or declare war on anyone and their military can only be used for defensive purposes.
> Can you elaborate more on why China's increasing military budget is a disturbing sign to you?
China is propping up North Korea[1] who launches ICBMs over Japan for fun.[2]
China and Russia are holding naval military exercises in Japan's backyard.[3]
China has been building up it's Navy.
China has become increasingly aggressive in territorial disputes with others.
China and Japan have a territorial dispute.[6]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_9_of_the_Japanese_Cons...
[1] https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/12/when-will-chi...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_Korean_missile_t...
[3] https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/12/asia/china-russia-south-china...
[4] https://globalsecurityreview.com/china-rapidly-bolstering-na...
[5] https://www.nytimes.com/topic/destination/chinas-territorial...
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senkaku_Islands_dispute
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I haven't finished it so I'll save you all from a premature review, but from what I have read so far I believe we need a more serious national conversation on China and the role that technology companies play in enabling dictatorships.
On that basis, what matters is whether China is following the rules it, and everyone else, agreed to. If you think some one is cheating you arbitrate. We made a deal.
Trump is intent on blatantly breaking the rules the US has agreed to, and breaking the deals it committed to. That is important because companies invest billions of dollars based on the rules countries agree on trade. Arbitrarily change the rules with no warning and those billions of dollars of investment can become worthless and the jobs associated with them lost in Canada, the EU and countries all over the world aside from China.
What is in the best interests of wealthy influential people and corporations may not be in the best interests of overall society. Maximizing GDP is not necessarily in the best interests of overall society.
I think this article makes some good points on whether "what we've agreed to" is actually "fair", and there are numerous other articles like it, but if an alien from another planet was to come here and listen to public discourse on the topic, they'd be left with the impression that there is no debate to be had.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/business/trade-chin...
It may be difficult to determine what is "objectively fair" in a complex globalized world, but it seems to me like there is a coordinated effort to avoid a conversation on the topic getting any kind of traction.
That's incorrect. China is failing, to an extraordinary degree, to comply with what it said that it would do in being allowed into the WTO. Namely, opening up their economy in terms of full and equal foreign access. At every step, they've refused to go forward with that. As it turns out, most likely, they were lying and buying time. Their goal is clearly to get large enough to not have to ever comply. They've been very obviously following Deng Xiaoping stated policy - 24 character strategy - of hiding their strength and biding their time.
North Korea used the same strategy to acquire its nuclear weapons. Lie, pretend you're going to do a thing, with no intention of doing the thing, buy time, get the nukes, then you no longer have to comply and or you've massively increased your bargaining position.
Of course, Western corporations and their executives who are profiting handsomely from it have good reason to "not notice" what's happening and continue to talk their book, but the wilful ignorance of genuinely well-meaning liberals is more complex.
I always wonder if Chinese leadership sometimes leans back and marvels at how easy it is to win when the uninformed citizens of your adversaries are in an ideological war with each other.
And it's a bit hard to peg who on the right/left we're talking about as high level politicians tend to blur the line when talk about trade deals. "True scotsman" and all.
Sanders was all over unfair trade deals that hurt American workers. Perhaps he would've done it in a responsible manner? If there is such a way.
Perhaps I'm remembering wrong. It seemed as if the right was all for trade deals until Trump made it popular.
I suppose I should have said modern "liberals", the word almost has no meaning anymore.
Bernie Sanders and Noam Chomsky are both historically very philosophically aligned with Trump on many of these topics, but many on the modern left, if you take them at their literal word, would have you believe they are some sort of alt-right hyper-capitalists.
I am of the opinion that some very powerful people have discovered a number of psychological tricks that the human mind, particularly under current Western moral beliefs, is almost completely defenseless against.
if this interests you, I recommend reading "IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation" by Edwin Black
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
It was interesting to read. Some countries have an official "balance of powers" defined in the Constitution. But even authoritarian or dictatorial regimes have an informal balance of powers. In the old Soviet Union they pretty much had the Politburo, the army and KGB. They kind of kept each other in check in strange way.
Wonder where the business interests fit in the China's balance of powers. Do large companies bribe the government officials or go through the party to get things done and how do they interact in general.
For about ~15 years before Xi fully consolidated power, that's how things routinely worked. It was run almost entirely on a bribery to get things done approach, in the business sphere.
Xi has moved the system/party on to new goals, with the business realm no longer having the same high order position that it previously did. I wouldn't want to be Jack Ma or Pony Ma in the environment that's being setup now. Alibaba and Tencent will eventually be too large for Xi's liking, if that's not already the case.
Australia's former PM, Kevin Rudd, has an excellent write-up on all of this (he has a particularly strong background regarding China):
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-03/emperor-x...
The bribery was an artifact of how power was shared in the PSC, and how the members jockeyed to maintain a balance of power. At a high level it wasn't corruption, per se, but the system through which the PSC members could exert influence when they weren't seated as the President, Chairman of the Central Military Commission, etc. It effectively operated like the checks & balances of Western institutions. If a PSC member opposed a policy preferred by the President, those backchannels to the party base and to industry was how they could push back, and ensured the posted leaders always had to acquiesce, to some degree, to the PSC members.
In as much as there was corruption, well that's the price you pay for not having a transparent system of governance with an independent civil service and independent judiciary without concentrating too much power into the hands of a (hopefully) benevolent dictator.
The problem is that all the senior leaders from the Maoist era are gone. The norms of the PSC were instituted intentionally to avoid the reemergence of Maoist extremism. This generation doesn't appreciate the critical importance of the power-sharing norms within the PSC. They think they can have their cake and eat it too: preserve the one party Communist system and provide streamlined, efficient governance, without instituting democratic, rule-of-law reforms. They apparently don't appreciate the fact that once the PSC is effectively dominated by a single individual, then the one party system is de facto extinguished--the party becomes subservient to a single individual.
More importantly, like many people they don't appreciate the fact that whether in democracy or single-party rule (which has a sort of internal democracy), some amount of organizational inefficiency is the price you must pay to keep power from centralizing. Maximum organizational efficiency can only be achieved in a dictatorship because that's the only way, theoretically, to maximally minimize transaction costs. But over the long-term history has shown that optimizing for short-term efficiency is a really bad idea and it tends to result in very inefficient long-term outcomes.
There was an interesting point made, that even though personal freedoms are being curtailed, party is consolidating its power, and ideology is emphasized more, those who reach economic prosperity will somehow demand or seek freedom and will push back. I think that's been the promise of Western-style capitalism + democracy -- we get some market capitalism going, with all its ills but that's ok, soon enough democracy will arrive.
But what if it is doesn't. What if this authoritarian mode can lead to a more efficient and effective system. (More brutal of course for individuals). That point was slightly touched in in regard to military, quoting a Bloomberg contributor, James Stavridis, a four star general ("a military under a single long term rule might have an advantage of set of figures that keep getting reshuffled every 4 years). But what if it is also economic efficiency too.
> No less important, the parliament will approve what looks like a new administrative branch that merges elements of the party, government, police and judiciary into a powerful organisation called the National Supervision Commission. This will incorporate the party’s discipline-enforcement body but work closely with the courts and report to the legislature—ie, there will be no separation of powers. It will be able to interrogate, search, detain and punish any official, whether from the party or the government bureaucracy, in cases involving corruption, violations of ethics and ideological deviation.
It sounds like any state check on the power of the party that existed before will be effectively neutered by this commission.
I thought we were supposed to learn that lesson after 9/11?
Ultimately, I think that the power of any society is in the hands of the citizens, and that Chinese culture is extremely pragmatic. They may be able to be kept peaceful for a bit, but if progress starts stagnating or even reversing, changes will happen.
I think the same of this high level tech as well. I could be wrong, but I think individuals do desire freedom and agency, and as long as that desire is there in some, it's going to be hard to squash.
One of my 'in the realm of possibility' dystopian fears is that a totalitarian regime figures out how to (chemically?) keep their society docile. Ideally the populace would still be creative, to an extent, but that might not even be necessary, or compensated for by stealing innovation from other places.
One could argue that this is already sort of happening in many places, without there being a big conspiracy behind it, I guess.
I tend to think that's the killer equation in the US culture, which is incentives that are set up for exposing stuff like this.
We don't need our journalists, politicians, scientists or any authority to be looking out for our best interest.
As long as there are ways for them to further their own self-interest in ways that go against other authorities, we have some folks watching our backs.
But in cases where you fundamentally alter someone's idea of self-interest, you're in a crazy amount of danger. And with the power one can wield, you're in for a lot of unintended consequences. Hopefully Pandora can be restrained just a bit.
I was born and raised in southern California, and one thing that I can consistently remember since I was a child was just how transactional southern Californians are in their relationships (as well as generally flaky, and relatively superficial; these are all common stereotypes, but in my experience, they contain a certain amount of truth).
So I know that this dynamic has not only existed for my lifetime, but also well known enough to be a stereotype, and I'm not sure how much it contributes to the larger dangers we've discussed.
If one of my siblings were to have financial trouble, or to start a business, it wouldn't be strange for me to decline helping them, whereas in the more traditional culture this would be considered rather selfish. And on the latter culture, when your parents get older and less useful to society, they move in with one of their kids (and often help out with the child-rearing). Putting them in a home would be unacceptable.
Furthermore, many of these things would extend to uncles and aunts and cousins, where in my current culture it's pretty normal to only see those at 'special' family occasions.
I also found that the relationship with neighbors and small businesses in the area were a lot more 'familial' in nature: 'watching the shop while owner does x', the shop-owner getting particular products just for you, but also a sense of loyalty. If you need a haircut/pedicure/etc., and a family member offers that service, it would be considered offensive to go to another place.
Basically, a lot of the stuff that 'we' would put in the transactional sphere were often much more like how we'd interact or deal with immediate family. A lot consisted of favors you'd do, with the implicit agreement that someone should do something equivalent for you. These intricate 'networks' of favors combined with various social obligations led to ties that were much stronger, obviously, than a purely commercial interaction.
I'm rambling a bit; still early here. I suppose a good book on the matter is Debt by David Graeber, but looking at how various immigrant communities operate can also be enlightening. I've experienced similar kinds of quasi-commercial relationships with the Turkish shops in my neighborhood, for example (I would fix their computer, they'd hold on to my house key for a friend to pick up, no shopping without chatting, etc.).
The joke he made was clearly to enrage us leftists, but it also reeked of a man who doesn't fully grasp this new situation, which is actually scary.
It was odd because China is an extremely advanced country and Xi Xinping made an extremely undemocratic, dictatorial move by abolishing term limits.
So now we have the makings of a dictator leading the largest country on Earth, commanding an extremely technologically-advanced military.
The cynic in me makes me think I don't understand Trump's joke because maybe he knows something I don't. The paranoid in me wonders, if Trump really is so misinformed.
At least we can (and do) peacefully and easily vote out our leaders for someone we'd rather have.
Trump's USA imprisons more people per capita than any other nation. And a disproportionately large number of those people are black men. For five decades, it has increasingly walked back checks and balances on the executive branch. NSA, on behalf of USG, has demonstrated the most complete surveillance of telecommunications on the planet. The Homan Square facility was used by CPD to disappear six thousand people. This is on a tiny scale compared to the work of the Chinese state apparatus, and it was eventually shut down. But it persisted for a decade.
The USA isn't better than China by very much. Arguably, it is worse. In any case, it is a far bigger hypocrite.
That's the most frightening thing I've ever heard about a US President.
I'm not saying you're wrong, though...
> Our public agenda is liberal in the classical sense. We have supported free trade ever since our foundation in 1843 when we opposed Britain’s corn laws, which sought to keep the price of grain high by limiting imports. We have continued to advocate bold policies in favour of individual freedoms, such as same-sex marriage and legalisation of drugs, regardless of whether they are politically popular, in the belief that the force of argument will eventually prevail.
https://www.economist.com/about-the-economist#editorial-phil...
Liberal economies: US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Italy, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, Portugal, Switzerland, Israel, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Iceland, Taiwan, Austria
Planned or otherwise heavily state controlled: China, North Korea, Cuba, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Sudan, Angola, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Egypt, Burma, Cambodia, Pakistan, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Laos, Sierra Leone, Liberia
Who doesn't love self-explanatory lists?
And speaking of giving money to the rich. China has the highest real inequality of any nation that has ever existed in world history. They have half a billion people living on less than $10 per day, and a quarter of a billion people living on less than $3 per day, while they have over 600 billionaires, including 100 billionaires in their parliament:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/02/chinas-parliament-has-about-...
USA is still a role model on many areas: cultural, economic, military, etc. It was never a moral role model, although that didn't deter the government of boasting about it anyway.
US debt on 6th of March 2000 was 5.7 trillions. [0] Today it is 20.8 trillions.
And what USA has to show for the mere 15 trillions of debt?
Affordable healthcare? Free education? Absence of homeless population? Shiny new infrastructure? Thousands of kilometers of speed-rails connecting major cities?
Role model. You guys are delusional. Let me tell you something like non-american. The whole world looks at you with sheer amusement.
[0] https://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/debt/current
PS: The only economic achievement I can list is that US elites have managed to alienate with their policies half of the country, so that half decided to give country a try with some real estate tycoon who enjoys to bang pornstars in his free time. Quite an achievement indeed. 15 trillions well spent.
And in 2012: "The Untold Story Of How Clinton's Budget Destroyed The American Economy" http://www.businessinsider.com/how-bill-clintons-balanced-bu...